Next time you’re cursing your crappy Internet connection, just be thankful that you don’t live in Pocatello. The southeastern Idaho town, located along the historic Oregon Trail, ranked in a recent study as having the slowest Internet speeds in the country. In fact, you may want to unplug entirely in Idaho, which ranked as having the slowest Internet speeds of the 50 states, according to a study by Pando Networks.
Washington state, in contrast, ranked as having the fast Internet speeds at 667 kilobytes per second. A factor in those speeds may be the fact that Comcast is the largest Internet service provider in the state.
The cable giant outperformed all other major ISPs nationwide, with an average download speed of 890kbps. That was followed by Verizon at 788 Kbps and Cox at 757 Kbps.
The top state for Internet speeds was Rhode Island, which boasted average download speeds of 894 Kbps.
California, Oregon and Washington all ranked in the top 15 for Internet speeds. The Midwest and Mountain West, which includes Idaho and Montana, had nine of the ten slowest states in terms of connectivity.
On the other hand, the rural Midwest and Mountain-West states of which Idaho is a member comprise nine of the ten slowest states. Middle America’s slow connectivity could be representative of its more widespread populations and a lower demand for high-speed data infrastructure.
A recent report by the FCC found that Olympia, Washington had some of the fastest broadband in the country.
